Holiday movies like this are rushed out by the dozen each year, and TV audiences are lucky if 1% of them are watchable. They have little to get all Christmasy over outside screaming Bah Humbug at because they contain nothing but the same old junky plots with characters the writer is foolish enough to think the audiences will find funny. The first scene with the bow tied nervous account manager (Zack Ward) running excitedly around preparingi for big boss Chevy Chase's arrival is cringe worthy, as is the unfunny antics of this one time comic genius who drops an ornament he's handed like it's boiling hot and stands back like he's waiting for applause.
All of the attempts to be funny here fail miserably, and leading heroine Abigail Hawk sounds like she needs a Smith Brothers cough drop throughout. Her cold character is only slightly less frigid than Chase, assigned by him to go to a small factory affiliate is Vermont to prepare for its closing, laying off everyone which is pretty much the whole town. It's way too predictable that her feelings are going to change once she gets to meet young boss David O'Connell and the division's founder, Howard Hesseman.
Poor Morgan Fairchild is reduced here to playing O'Connell smothering mama, still looking like she's getting ready to head to Flamingo Road foe the holidays, and sadly wasted. I wouldn't mind predictable if the writing wasn't so derivative and trite. When Hawk repeats something said to her earlier ("Christmas is a commercialized holiday meant to separate you from your wallet"), all of the paint by number plot twists that you predict to happen certainly will. It's nothing but another opportunity to type big city dwellers as cold hearted while simplifying what people in small towns are like, and the result is another holiday film that deserves to be tossed out with the left over Christmas present wrapping paper.
All of the attempts to be funny here fail miserably, and leading heroine Abigail Hawk sounds like she needs a Smith Brothers cough drop throughout. Her cold character is only slightly less frigid than Chase, assigned by him to go to a small factory affiliate is Vermont to prepare for its closing, laying off everyone which is pretty much the whole town. It's way too predictable that her feelings are going to change once she gets to meet young boss David O'Connell and the division's founder, Howard Hesseman.
Poor Morgan Fairchild is reduced here to playing O'Connell smothering mama, still looking like she's getting ready to head to Flamingo Road foe the holidays, and sadly wasted. I wouldn't mind predictable if the writing wasn't so derivative and trite. When Hawk repeats something said to her earlier ("Christmas is a commercialized holiday meant to separate you from your wallet"), all of the paint by number plot twists that you predict to happen certainly will. It's nothing but another opportunity to type big city dwellers as cold hearted while simplifying what people in small towns are like, and the result is another holiday film that deserves to be tossed out with the left over Christmas present wrapping paper.